Hemo the Magnificent (1957)

Image from VTTV

I really like classic edutainment movies and cartoons, especially from older eras. I watched stuff like this in elementary school in the 1990's, even though many of the videos were painfully out of date. And my grandmother made me watch shows like Mr. Wizard, Beekman's World, and Bill Nye the Science Guy, even though I would have rather watched stuff like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Inspector Gadget. But I grew to love these weird old educational shows.   

Hemo the Magnificient seems to be some sort of ancient and powerful blood god; angry and vain, who distrusts humans and chooses to live among the animals instead. I don't blame him really. 

I don't know if kids these days would appreciate a movie like this. In general it seems like everyone's attention span has gotten much, much shorter. It's a cartoon for sure, but it's still very much a lesson on the human body and I can see kids these days just glazing over the material and just watching something like Crash Course or SciShow on YouTube. But this interesting little documentary would have really gotten my attention if I had gotten to see it as a kid. 

I found out about Hemo and the other Bell documentaries while on Zoom during the weekly SubGenius Church Meeting. Apparently this is something the great Dr. Hal grew up watching. And this documentary is one of many in a series from Bell, so I look forward to watching the rest of them. I'm not sure what order they come in, I'm just jumping in by what title strikes a chord with me. 

The next one I plan on watching is called GODDESS UNCHAINED, in which the weather goddess, Meteora teaches us about the weather and apparently predicts climate change. 

A confession? Death looms over us as Eris giggles

Death is so distressing. Like, it's probably not the worst thing that could happen to a person, but it's might be the second or third worst. Death has been looming over all of us since the moment we were conceived, and the moment we were both we were filled with the hopes and dreams of our families of what we could potentially become in this world. I guess that's kinda like fate if you squint hard enough. Some of us follow that road and some of us shrug it off and go our own way. Some folks ignore responsibility while others do their best to uphold it. But eventually we all end up in the space place. 

Death has been on my my mind ever since last November when a good friend of mine passed away on my birthday. I never really shook it off, and honestly it's probably going to haunt me forever. A month after she passed away I went on a month long trip to the Philippines where I experienced life in ways I never thought I could. And when I returned to the US, there was the looming pandemic; something that I heard about while in the Philippines but never considered it could follow me back to the states. 

One of my turtles  recently died due to a freak accident. We only had Princess Mary in our lives for a few years, and I did my absolute best to take care of her but when I realized what had happened it was too late. This only happened a few weeks ago and I'm still dealing with the loss.

Recently, my grandfather (my mom's father) and my father both fell into some very complicated health issues due to their advancing ages. They're both in their 90's and it shows. They're clearly not the men they once were and it's both heartbreaking and frightening. Watching them and how they suffer now is like staring death in the eyes. 

And lately, my heart has been giving me trouble, and it feels like the circulation in my body has stalled to a near halt. I'm stressed, and filled with anxiety. I've worked all throughout the quarantine period in a very tiring overnight job. The pandemic left my city in a state of purgatory. For weeks as I traveled to work by public transport I didn't see a single person. The death toll kept rising but I kept going to work. It's the stress of that period plus the possible deaths of my father and grandfather that are really starting to weigh me down I feel. I feel like I may actually die this year. 

But I'm sure we've all tripped over that thought recently. This year that the Conspiracy calls "2020" is of course programmed to make us feel that way because it's been so fucking awful! These are not the End Times we were promised by biblical prophecies! Where are the demons, angels, and hot ladies riding three-headed dragons! THIS IS THE BULLSHIT END TIMES BECAUSE IT'S ALL SO DESOLATE AND LONELY! 

I wanted the end of the world to look like GODZILLA KING OF THE MONSTERS dammit! Where are the monsters? The angels and demons? Have they also abandoned us?! Why does 2020 have to be the loneliest year! Everyone is in isolation, quarantined and on their own! 

I'll tell ya why it has to be this way; this is still the preshow of things to come! The world, maybe even the universe, is challenging us to a fight and we have to make sure that if the world ends it ends the way WE want it to, not THEIR way! We may very well be just mere snack food to horrible cosmic monsters, but fuck it all, it's time to start living. They don't want it that way, but fuck'em. Those pricks. 

One reason 2020 is currently terrible is probably my fault though, if I'm honest. I may have tampered with forces I barely understand (again) but I had the best of intentions this time, I swear! 

As a SubGenius reverend, but also a practicing Discordian, I was at a point in my life where I grew tired of the amount of normalcy piling up on me on a near daily basis. Everything was all so boring and humdrum I had to try something. So as a follower of  J. R. "Bob" Dobbs, I decided it was time to quit my job. It seemed like a good first step.

But then I tried something else to supplement that... 

So on New Years Eve of last year, I prayed to Eris of Discorida. I asked her to make 2020 an "interesting year" and to create "new experiences for all of us. And, well, all I can say is "whoopsies". I was spending time with my family and friends in the Philippines and I felt like adding a bit of spice to the upcoming year. Had I known then what I know now about it all I probably would have hesitated; hindsight is "2020" after all.

Eris must be having a bit of fun with us. Or maybe she's just flirting with JHVH-1 again. Whatever the case may be, we're all paying the price and I guess I was one of the conduits for all of this discord. Again; whoopsies. 

So if I'm part of the problem, I guess I'll have to figure out how to fix it all. I mean, how hard can that be? And besides, maybe everything will work out just fine. 

Just fine... 

Guimo Revelations: The Billiken Connection

So several night's ago I had a very vivid dream about what seemed to be a sort of personal revelation of my higher-self, which is of course Billykin. This character acts as my personal avatar, higher-self, astral form, guardian angel, and is to me 

I'm fairly certain that this image of Billykin and Billy-Can't comes from a novelty postcard, which I am currently hunting for. I found this image while researching on the various kinds of Billiken novelties that were available and the smile and pose of Billykin really stuck with me so much so that I chose him as my avatar for any and all online forums and social media outlets that I use. I adopted him as a personal mascot. I love this image of him happily taking a dump in a chamber pot  while he smiles at Billy-Cant't who is struggling. These two are definitely aspects of my inner life and reflect two of my major moods; happiness and distress. 

"Billykin", my chosen avatar, is a parody of "Billiken", a novelty toy god created in the early 1900's. It's origins are fairly complex but basically Billiken was a very popular novelty statue and doll. I first learned about Billiken through The Church of Good Luck, which has a phenomenal amount of information on the entire history of the character and it's creator. It's a wonderful archive and I believe if you're interested in this sort of obscure pseudo-religious good luck novelty (like I am) you should check them out. The Church of Good Luck isn't rebellious religion of mockery, like The Church of the SubGenius is, and it does take itself somewhat seriously. 

The creator of Billiken was a follower of New Age thought and believed she was a Japanese woman in a previous life, which is amazing because in Japan Billiken is still quite popular in Osaka and there are many statues and novelties dedicated to him. And believe me, if there's any place in the world I'd love to move to forever, it'd be Osaka. It's a beautiful place and I do love Japan with all of my heart. 

To be honest, Billiken has been following me for years. I've had many dreams about the character and I do feel like there's something it's trying to teach me. Billiken's title is "the God of Things As They Ought to be", which means he's the god of dreams, but also good luck and fortune. I live in my dreams. This so-called reality we wander around in is without question some sort of prison of our own collective making, but in our dreams we can fly free. Billiken is the anthropomorphization of that dream reality for me. 

So dedicated am I to this strange god I even carry a pocket piece of him everywhere I go. This lucky coin is from the era from when Billiken was at the height of his popularity and I managed to snag it at a fairly decent price. I don't actually put much faith into trinkets like these, but I do enjoy them and their kitsch quality. 

It's a weird road I traveled to discovery Billiken, and eventually that my cosmic soul was Billykin in nature. I studied with Unarius, then discovered the SubGenius, then Discordianism, which led me down a strange, strange rabbit hole of researching other deities. All of this really helped me get a handle on my own life and learn things about myself that I was too afraid to confront. We all carry baggage, and these sorts of studies and mind exercises help relieve some of that burden. 

So, in any case, about that dream I had a few days ago. It's been stuck in my mind for days so I thought I'd share it here. 

GUIMO DESTROYS AND CREATES THE WORLD AND ALL THINGS THEREIN BY TOTAL ACCIDENT BUT ALSO ON PURPOSE

In some hire realm, I was some sort of  flying, fat cherub angel baby. I was my Billykin avatar, but with tiny wings. I guess this place I was in was supposed to be heaven, or some facsimile thereof. I was eating a banana and I tossed the peel over my shoulder. And even though I was flying, I slipped out of the banana peel and fell out of heaven. 

My crash landing on the earth was what killed all the dinosaurs, save for a few that survived. The crash also helped create the very first cryptids and monsters that still wander the earth to this very day. I also lost my wings and I couldn't flutter around anymore. Dang.

While trying to repair the earth I somehow created of automaton robot super droids to build the continents. The impact of my landing nearly flattened the whole planet so there was a lot of work to do.

When the world was reconstructed, and the leftover dinosaurs, monsters, and cryptids were safely tucked away in their own natural habitats, it was time to introduce this new world to some human beings. This, of course, was my greatest folly. 

Humans were created using fish, specifically the great fur-bearing trout, and letting them soak in Mutan Generating Ooze (Mutagen). 

The end result of all of these is what you see before you now. All the cryptids are in hiding, some dinos still wander around, and the monsters are nowhere to be found. Humans, of course, make things worse for others. But that's too broad of a generalization and I refuse to take it to heart. 

And this was a dream of course. Just something for me to think about as it also reflects something within myself. It's not some sort of hidden cosmic truth. 

Or is it?!